Democrats: Veering Left = ’28 Doom

“The far left is having a moment, and Democratic presidential aspirants are no doubt watching,” observe Jon Cowan & Matt Bennett at The Washington Post. But beware: “Moving far to the left is poison in a presidential general election campaign.”

“The math is inescapable” for a Dem nominee: “If you get 60 percent of moderates, you’re president. If you don’t, you lose.”

Remember, “what voters look for in a primary candidate for governor or senator is different from what they seek in a presidential nominee.”

A 2028 hopeful should aim for “combative centrism that challenges the status quo, not caution or socialism.”

That means “picking fights with Trump” but not veering further left, a “direction voters rejected” in 2024. “That’s not resistance, that’s amnesia.”

Republican: Bashing the Loonies Isn’t Not Enough

Instead of gloating over “the rise  . . . of the loony left,” “Republicans must convince voters they deserve to keep the majority,” in Congress, argues Liz Peek at The Hill.

Socialists “are not only chalking up wins in deep blue territories,” but also making “inroads in a country” that has “grown less enthusiastic about capitalism.”

Polling shows “nearly two-thirds of Americans ages 18 to 29 have a favorable view of socialism,” so it’s “not enough” to just point out “the kookery.” Rather, Republicans must “show voters how they will make their lives better.”

Pollster John McLaughlin finds that most voters want “middle-class tax relief, reductions in waste and fraud, proof of citizenship and voter identification requirements,” and “repudiate Socialism when it is connected to Big Government solutions.”

GOP candidates “need to connect these dots.” 

Foreign desk: Remaking the Middle East

The “critics and questioners” of the war with Iran “seem obtuse to the prophetic truth”: We’re now witness to the “biggest reshaping of the Middle East” in history, “in a good way,”  explains James Jay Carafano at 1945.

Trump’s winning if “the long-term peace structure the president is seeking” is emerging — and it is: Iran’s capacity to “shut down up to a third or more of the world’s oil exports” has been ended, and the “Board of Peace” is “jump-starting regional reconstruction projects” to displace “Iranian surrogates.”

Economic integration and “security cooperation” among “regional powers” are enhancing a “deterrence framework” against the “current Iranian regime.”

“These are not signs of defeat, but regional transformation on an unprecedented scale.”

Conservative: Death to ‘Pay To Slay’

Justice Sonia Sotomayor denied the Palestinian Authority’s request “to freeze a $655 million judgment against the” Palestine Liberation Organization for “attacks against Americans during the Second Intifada,” cheers Commentary’s Seth Mandel.

The PA said “paying out the judgment could cause” it to collapse. Huh? That argument is: “If you hold us accountable for violence . . . much more violence will follow.”

Maybe so, but that’s “a choice the PA made knowingly when it decided to keep rewarding terrorists” after Congress in 2019 changed the law to stop protecting the PA from sending cash rewards to those “who kill Jews.”

This is just “hostage taking”: We can’t let the PA manipulate us “by holding a gun to its own head,” and any Palestinian “government that does is eventually going to collapse anyway.”

Scientist: National Academies’ Good Name Abused

Reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are treated “as the collective judgment of more than 8,400 members — each elected for a lifetime of distinguished achievement” — yet, warns Steven E. Koonin at the Wall Street Journal, a recent one linking “specific extreme weather events” to “greenhouse gas emissions” was only reviewed by two members of the academies.

Fact is, the academies have little direct influence in the “day to day decisions” made by “nonmember staff and outside experts” — so if they “want to speak with the authority of thousands,” they must “be honest” about the research that is being impressed with their credibility.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board